“Why were they buried here?” I asked him.
He nodded to the hotel across the street. “The soldiers wanted it. They said their souls would never sleep after what they did if we buried them in the other village, and maybe they’re right.”
He saw me staring past him toward the grave, but he mistook my concern for pity.
“Don’t feel bad for them,” he said. “At least you helped bury them.”
He walked to the other side of the tree and stood on top of the grave. I thought he was going to spit on it, but instead he dug the heel of his right boot into the mound of earth as deep as he could.
“What happened?” I asked him.
He pretended to ignore the question, focusing his efforts on pressing his foot deeper into the ground. After several minutes, he finally responded. “Why would you want to know more?”
I didn’t have an answer, so I chose the one I thought he would want to hear. I pulled out the notebook he had given me. So far, I had filled six pages — four with a map, two more with half-finished sentences — but only I knew that.
“If you’re going to write something, write something nice,” he said. “Something that will make people happy. No one needs to read this.”
He began to dig with his other foot. I let him do so for several minutes before interrupting to ask him the same question again: “What happened?” Or maybe the second time I said, “Tell me what happened.” Either way, it wasn’t the right question. The “what” was obvious. What I didn’t know was what Isaac had done.
He kicked a mound of dirt into my hair without looking up at me. I took a few steps back, but that still didn’t feel far enough, so I walked around his left side until I was standing several feet directly behind him. I tried again.
“Did you kill anyone?” I asked him.
I watched his right leg take a long swing back and then abruptly stop just before it hit the ground.
“That’s a stupid question,” he said. “If you want to know, you should ask how many.”
“How many?”
“No. ‘How many people did you kill?’ ”
“How many people did you kill?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “More than I can count. Too many.”
I waited for him to turn around, but he didn’t. He kept his gaze firmly fixed on the tree in front of him as he made a few more stabs into the ground.
“Ask me how we killed them,” he said.
“How did you kill them?”
“We didn’t shoot them.”
“You cut them.”
“Yes. We beat them. We burned them. We had no bullets left. Ask me if we buried them.”
“Did you bury them?”
“No. We left them for the vultures and dogs. And then we ran back here so we wouldn’t have to look at what we had done.”
His right foot was buried past his ankle. I understood now why he was doing that.
“How deep is this hole?” he asked me.
“Not very deep,” I said.
He pulled his foot out of the ground and shook the dirt from his shoes.
“Good,” he said. “It’s already more than they deserve.”
HELEN
We set our sights on the Hancock Center and aimed straight for it. Isaac watched the city through my window, while I found it hard not to stare at the lake out of his. This was still the Midwest, but it didn’t have the hard, firm earth that was supposed to come with it. The city ended abruptly, rather than trailing off into open fields like Laurel. This bothered me. I knew Isaac didn’t see it that way, so I kept silent as we traced our way along the shoreline, past the center of the city, and around a tight bend. I followed the heaviest traffic onto Michigan Avenue, where we met the Hancock Center head-on. Isaac leaned against the dashboard to get a better look. It was all wonderful to him. He saw the great possibilities buildings like that promised, especially to men like him, who had no idea what it meant to scale them.
We parked three blocks away from the tower he admired so much. Once we were out of the car, I told him to lead the way.
“This is your parade,” I said. He smiled. He had no idea what that meant. “It’s my turn to follow you now,” I explained.
Neither of us knew where we were. We had only the Hancock to orient us, and so of course Isaac retraced our route back to it. “I want to touch it,” he said, as if this was a confession of a desire he was embarrassed about. I imagined a surface slick and oily against my hand, one that would linger for a long time.
“Then let’s touch it,” I said.
The distance on foot was greater than I thought. The blocks were long. The sidewalks were more like roads, wide and crowded; it felt dangerous to walk down them. While Isaac looked up, I watched the faces that passed us. We weren’t holding hands, but we were standing close to each other. When Isaac caught something that fascinated him, he turned to me so I could share it with him. There were gargoyles, moldings, spires, and strange etchings on the sides of buildings, all of which could be seen if you walked with your head turned up. It wasn’t just buildings, though. There was an antique red roadster parked across the street that he wanted me to see, and a fountain; every beggar we passed demanded his attention, but not his curiosity. I looked wherever he told me and just as quickly looked to see the reaction of whoever was near us. As far as I could tell, no one had noticed us. I thought this was what it felt like to be invisible, but when I subtracted Isaac I realized that, until he came along, this was how I had always felt. Not invisible, but a natural part of the background, entitled to all the privileges that came with ownership.
We stopped in front of the Hancock. Isaac wanted to see it from multiple angles, so we crossed the street, moved to various corners, and craned our necks to stare up the shiny black exterior.
“It is amazing,” he said.
The awe was genuine. I wanted to know how he sustained it. We stood near the main entrance and rubbed our hands against the exterior. It was warm, polished; I wanted to say it was softer than I expected.
“Should we go inside?”
He shook his head.
“We can’t appreciate it from in there,” he said.
Isaac took my hand.
“Let’s walk,” he said.
We hesitated, looking at our hands, not each other, then gathered our strength and moved forward. We walked. It didn’t feel like a victory over anything, but I was proud and, to an equal degree, scared. After walking one block like that, I was grateful for the feeling of his hand in mine, and even for the anxiety that came with it. After two more blocks, the gratitude had turned to sorrow that we hadn’t had this sooner. All this time, I thought, we’ve been at best only half of what was possible.
I wished my mother could have seen us. I wished David were watching from around the corner.
“Are you okay?”
I wasn’t crying, but the view ahead was blurred.
“I’m great. Wonderful,” I said.
I squeezed his hand hard. He locked his fingers around mine. As long as we continued walking, I was certain that nothing could break us.
The light ahead turned red just as we reached the intersection. We slowed, and as soon as we came to a stop, a crowd formed around us. We were at the front of the pack, which was better than being in the middle, but still we were exposed. I noticed right away that the man next to Isaac and the woman standing closest to me were staring at us, and of course they weren’t alone. I kept my head up without looking at anyone long enough to read their expressions. I knew what was there — anger, pity, contempt, maybe even envy — but I was convinced that there must have also been a touch of wonder, maybe even awe at the sight of us.